Batman: Tick Tock
by godofpencils
Summary: Victor Zsasz and Killer Croc are on the loose. A wave of abductions is sweeping Gotham city. People, including children are vanishing from their homes. After the city has spent years getting accustomed to flamboyant supervillains, the populace is struck with fear by the complete mystery of this attack. The Dark Knight investigates.
1. Prologue

At 11:30pm exactly, in the east side of Gotham City, Jean Athens stumbled back into her apartment with a giggle. She looked most undignified, she knew, but the man she had brought home with her was a well-built, well-dressed, well-blonde haired kind of guy, and she doubted he cared much for decorum.

She had in fact been planning on staying out till much later, and was secretly glad she had picked up this strapping gent early on. Her apartment was only four blocks from the infamous Iceberg Lounge, the finest casino and second finest mob hideout in the city, and most of the nearby area was infested by unsavoury characters. Not that it mattered to her this night. She had pegged her companion for a former quarterback, and whilst he wasn't an especially big man – in her heels, she was nearly the same height as him – there was something in his dark eyes that boasted confidence. _Size doesn't equal power_ , she thought to herself with a cheeky grin. Anyone who had seen the owner of the Iceberg Lounge could tell you that.

'What are those for?' Jean whipped her head around. Her companion – the Madame, she had teasingly called him earlier when she misheard his name - had poked his head into her bedroom, and noticed a pair of handcuffs, idly left on top of her dresser. She hadn't realised he'd moved to the bedroom door, or that she'd left it open.

'OH! Those, er…'

'Are you an undercover cop?' he asked her. His voice was so deadpan, she almost believed he was sincere, and resumed giggling.

'No, I just, er… I'm…' Jean summoned up her courage. It was the twenty first century, and no one ever got what they wanted by pretending they didn't want it. 'I'm naughty sometimes.' She looked up, giving her best attempt at seductive eyes.

'So I see. You believe in fate?'

'What?'

'Do you believe in fate?' he repeated. His voice was surprisingly soft, and soothed her nerves.

'Honestly, no,' she replied.

'Me neither. It makes times like these all the more impressive,' said the Madame. He reached the pocket of his leather rockabilly jacket, and pulled out leather strap with a red sphere fixed in it. A more naïve young lady might have been confused. Jean immediately recognised it as a ball gag. 'Snap,' The Madame said.

She didn't giggle in response to that. Instead, she marched into the bedroom, and in one fluid motion, grabbed the zip atop the right side of her dress, pulled it right down, then whipped the whole thing off and away. She kicked her heels of and let herself do a sort of spinning fall backwards onto her bed, in just her lingerie.

The Madame, to his credit, immediately played along, taking his jacket off. He seized the cuffs and climbed onto the bed, on top of her. He fed the handcuffs through the gaps of the metal frame that atop her bed like a headboard and managed to get one cuff on each side of the central pole in the framework

'Hold your hands up,' he told her. Even in his soft voice, it was unmistakably an order.

'Mmm, yes Master…' she replied, and complied. 'Or should that be Mistress?' she added teasingly, as he took her hands and fastened them into the handcuffs. She was getting at his mercy know, and was keen to see just how vulnerable she could be.

'What do you mean?

'Well, _Madame_ , what was it you said your name was? Vanessa? Victoria?' She winked at him.

'Those are girls names, young madam. I said my name was Victor Zsasz.'

Jean pretended to gasp in shock. 'Oh, I am so sorry Master! How silly of me. How naughty.' She waited for him to take the bait, but he simply picked up the ball gag. So she added 'Maybe I deserve to be punished.'

'Oh, but I don't want to punish you,' said Victor. His voice was now a whisper. 'I'm not a punisher. I'm an artist. I want to make you a fine piece of work.' This was a surprise, but Jean liked the sound of it. She wondered if he had some ropes with him, or knew a few tricks to make her feel like a work of art in some way.

'Oh Master, will I be a prize piece in your collection?' She asked.

'Hush now,' he said, putting the straps of the ball gag around the back of her head. She willingly opened her mouth and let him place it here delicately, before clamping down on it with her teeth. This was unlike anything she had done before. Victor was amazing her. He was also scarring her. She had a hard time saying which one she preferred at the moment.

'You will be a prize piece. Someone who sees it. The liberation in pain,' he muttered. He removed his shirt, revealing a well-toned torso. Looking closer, Jean was again surprised by the man she had invited home. There were three cuts across his right pectoral, two down the left of his abdomen, four on his left arm, three on his right, and five on his right shoulder, forming a tally mark. She started to wonder what she had let herself in for.

'It's incredible' Victor muttered, more to himself than her. 'Just what happens when you see through it. Life's lies. When you give in to your desires and feel it. The truth. Nothing more true than pure, honest pain.'

And he slit her throat. She hadn't seen him get the knife out. She had been too fixated on his monologue. His dark eyes were starting to grow light with some kind of longing, and it had worried her in a very unpleasant way. When the knife crossed her throat, she barely felt the agony before all her sense dulled and she slipped away. The last thing she saw were those eyes, alight with glee at the newest piece of art, that only those dark eyes would appreciate.

'Nothing more true. Nothing that makes us more alive,' said Victor Zsasz. And he cut a fourth line down his right pectoral, gasping in ecstasy.


	2. Chapter 1

Atop the highest point in Gotham City stood Wayne Manor. The building teetered on the outskirts of the city, separated from the rest of the world by a dense wall of trees and an actual wall. The building was nearly two-hundred years old and was defiantly classical in style, against the increasingly metropolitan city. Though it appeared to be a mansion, it was in fact more like a tower, with a wealth of subterranean rooms under the main building. After the mansion that stood above ground was found to be rather lacking in structural integrity, a lot of those lower rooms were knocked through to make stronger foundations for it, leaving a labyrinth of steel bars in their wake.

During the Cold War, Alistair Wayne, who was starting to become paranoid in his age, insisted on building a reinforced bunker in some of the few remaining rooms, so as to shelter from a nuclear war. His son Thomas, then CEO of Wayne Enterprises, indulged his father's wishes. This was mainly because his father had the strongest willpower of anyone he had ever known, which often translated into incredible stubbornness, but he nonetheless felt more secure knowing there was a sanctuary within reach should the worst come to worst.

But his fears had been unfounded, and the family had allowed the lower foundations to go ignored for many years. They were eventually rediscovered by Thomas's six year old son Bruce, when he investigated the appearance of a bat he had seen outside his window one evening. Most children would have been scared seeing the dark winged creature as it screeched outside their bedroom. Bruce was fascinated, and tracked it to its nest. The next day, he showed his father, who was impressed, and occasionally took Bruce down to the area to play, provided he never went out of site in 'the caves' as he jokingly called them. Bruce loved the area, and began to think of it as his sanctuary, especially when he was allowed into the bunker. Two years later, when his parents were murdered, he ran from his room when the police brought him home and hid in the bunker for hours before Alfred Pennyworth, valet to the Wayne family, found him crying on one of the beds inside. Thirty years later, the area still functioned as kind of sanctuary, albeit a very different one than Alistair Wayne had ever envisioned.

Bruce Wayne was tired. His mind was fully alert, ready to respond to the slightest disturbance in his environment, but his body could not keep up, which was certainly saying something when one considered it's astonishing prowess, including but not limited to bending steel bars, leaping from rooftops, Olympic class gymnastic flexibility, and reflexes so fast that The Flash himself had called his speed 'Impressive. For, y'know, an ordinary guy, I mean. Well, impressive for a guy, just not…ordinary.'

He was right; Bruce Wayne was far from ordinary. Yet his body was growing tired. Even the lightweight mesh body armour he was wearing was beginning to weigh him down slightly. He reckoned he had been awake for forty nine hours and twenty six minutes, give or take a minute or two, and he knew he would need to sleep soon. He would allow himself ten and a half hours rest before he took to the streets again. They needed him, even more than he needed them.

'Master Wayne,' a voice came from one of the many computer monitors in front of him, echoing throughout the vast subterranean lair. 'Those of us who take the more conformist approach of sleeping in our beds would like to express our concern about your wakefulness.'

'What is it Alfred?' Bruce asked. Except he was speaking in a voice two pitches lower than his normal voice, so it wasn't really Bruce who asked.

'The Commissioner has indicated a need to speak with you at once sir. Should I indicate that you are indisposed?'

'No Alfred. I'll go at once.' He stood up and replaced his cowl and cape in their rightful position. 'If I'm not back in three hours, don't stay awake on my behalf.'

'With respect Master Wayne, firstly, when I said 'you' I was speaking in the plural. Secondly, I will not stand or lie idle whilst you are out on…'

'I'm not talking Robin with me on this one.'

'Sir, between the three of us, only you have been awake for two days. You would fare better if accompanied by someone who is still at peak alert.'

'I'm fine,' Batman said. 'I'll rest when the mission is done, not before. I'm going now. Alone.' He turned away from the desk and marched to the edge of the aging but nonetheless sturdy scaffolding it had been drilled into. Instead of talking the metal stairs that had been installed, he simply leapt off the rock, gliding forty feet down. His cape automatically spread out like wings, acting as a parachute, so he landed softly on the damp, grassy ground at the bottom of the complex, right next to the Batmobile.

Batman pressed a button on the side of his belt. The top right side of the vehicle smoothly lifted up and outwards, allowing him to climb in. The lights inside automatically flicked on as the door closed again. He checked the rear view mirror first and immediately realised the problem. It was a Thursday night. That meant it had been five nights since the inside of the Batmobile had been cleaned. A fine layer of dust was visible to his highly perceptive eyes on the backseat, but it was unevenly spread. There were larger clusters on the back-right floor and door, but less on the seat. Quickly but silently, Batman checked the vehicle's computer. It confirmed that the cave door had last been opened twenty three hours ago, the last time he had opened them. Since there was no other conceivable way into the cave, that narrowed down the list of suspects dramatically.

'Robin, get out.'

'No,' said the back-right seat.

'You are sitting this night out.'

'No,' it repeated.

Batman reached back for the button concealed on the underside of the passenger seat headrest. He pressed it three times in under a second. The back-rights seat opened, revealing a space big enough for a grown man to hide in. It was reasonably roomy for the tiny figure huddled inside.

'You never even told me the Batmobile had a panic room. I thought you didn't know,' said Robin.

'I already knew that you knew,' Batman said. 'I knew it would give me the advantage when you tried to hide in here one day.'

Robin climbed into the front. 'We better not keep the Commissioner waiting.'

'You're not coming,' said Batman. 'Whoever's doing this is unusually violent and cruel and has no problem attacking children. '

'So was Two-Face, We took him down together.'

'You scouted the area and set up a perimeter for me to take him down. And he's never killed children.'

'I can help.'

'You're not coming,' Batman repeated. 'If I need to bench you until you co-operate…'

'How old was Dick when he first went against the Joker?' asked Robin.

'Sixteen,' Batman replied. 'Older than you.'

'Three months older,' said Robin. 'You always tell me to be more like Dick. Here's my chance.'

'You are trying to emotionally manipulate the world's greatest detective,' Batman said flatly.

'Is it working?' asked Robin.

Looking closely at the cowl's eyeholes, Robin noticed a shift in the width of Batman's eyes that suggested a slight incline of the eyebrows, and a twitch of his lips. By the standards of his usual stoicism, this was practically a grin.

'You stand and listen. If it gets rough, follow my lead unless instructed otherwise. Any nonsense or failure to obey and you're going back to Nightwing for further training. And this time, you'll be there for six months. He won't go easy on you like I will.

'No problem,' said Robin. Three months spent training with Nightwing in the past was enough to confirm this was no idle threat.

They arrived at the Gotham City Police Department seventeen minutes later. The GPD still officially classified them as vigilantes, which did not stop them from walking in the front door.

'Tell the Commissioner we need to see him now,' Batman said curtly to the receptionist, a soon as he and Robin walked into the lobby. The receptionist blinked at him.

'Now,' Batman said.

The receptionist quietly picked up the phone. 'Please tell Commissioner Gordon he's here. No I know the Commissioner's here, I meant _he's_ here. _Him_.' The receptionist glanced up at Batman. 'Don't make me say it out loud, just tell him he's here!' He put the phone down. 'I think you can, uh…'

'Thanks,' said Robin. The duo walked right past the desk and up the stairs without glancing back.

They didn't have far to go. Commissioner Gordon had hurried down to meet them by the time they had exited the stairwell.

'There was no mention of company,' Gordon muttered as he saw Robin's tiny figure next to Batman.

'What's the news?' Batman asked, ignoring Gordon's observation.

'Three more people have gone missing, including an eight year old boy.'

'Stephanie Whitleson, Maria Hernandez and Elliot Thomson,' Batman recited. 'I checked the police records before I came over.'

'Oh good, that's reassuring to know,' Gordon replied in a voice so deadpan it was hard to tell whether or not he was being sincere. 'Well, just a few minutes ago, we had reports from eyewitnesses, who are talking to Detective Cash as we speak. I'd like to see what you can make of them.

Two minutes later, Batman, Robin and Gordon were behind a mirror, watching Aaron Cash talk to a middle aged man and wife. Cash's frown lines gave him a severe look that his kind, understanding eyes normally balanced out, but now they were narrowed in scepticism as he listened to the couple.

'You are certain it then? It was a giant amphibian?' he asked.

'Yes!' The man said rather desperately. 'We both saw it clearly! It came out of one of those large sewer pipes by the docks. It was like a huge alligator, maybe a crocodile, but it clambered up onto two legs like a person, and grabbed poor Maria. We heard her cry out before it put its claw over her mouth and dragged her into the drain with it.'

'It would take a pretty smart crocodile to kidnap a woman and know how to shut her up when she cried for help,' said Cash.

'We're not crazy,' said the woman, her eyes starting to grow tearful. 'We don't take the drugs or believe in crazy things or anyone of that nonsense. It's just what we saw. We saw that thing take poor little Maria and…' She covered her face and muttered through her hands 'She's only twenty-four.'

'Alright, ma'am, that's alright,' said Cash. 'As long as you're certain. And you saw all this at around half nine this evening, correct?'

'Yes,' the lady sobbed. 'Please, just find her! Just help the poor girl…'

'I believe we have you best guys on it now,' said Cash. As he said this, Batman and Robin left the room behind the mirror.

'Will you two…' Gordon began.

'If you need us, try the docks,' said Robin. 'If you can't find us there after the first hour, try the morgue.'


	3. Chapter 2

In the sewers of Gotham, Victor Zsasz had created a sort of lair for himself. A few of the tunnels connected to a large, circular room, belonging to an abandoned power plant that had never been fully built. He had arranged a mattress, a table, a few towels, some candles, and a couple of books into the back of the room, and used the rest as his 'workspace' as he called it. He was constantly spraying air freshener down there. Not because he was someone who couldn't stand bad smells normally, but the smells down there could give someone serious headaches if exposed to them for too long, so it proved necessary. He didn't know how his unlikely companion could stand to spend so much time in the day patrolling the sewers, although he supposed that sewage wasn't the only bad smell in the room he now resided in. He was also rather cold down there, although he supposed that was probably because he wasn't wearing a shirt, only dark tracksuit bottoms, shoes and socks.

Zsasz was a changed man, and looked it. His torso, once rather pleasingly toned, was now very conspicuously unappealing. He was not eating regularly, as he had to steal food, and food that could be eaten immediately at that, given he would have no way to cook it down here. The lines of his musculature remained, but they now stood limply and uselessly on his scrawny frame, competing with his ribcage to see which could be more prominently visible. His once shiny blond hair had been shaved to baldness to prevent small and unpleasant creatures from residing in it. And being underground for so long had of course left his skin very pale. The end result of all this was that he looked like a bodybuilder dying of AIDS.

More hideous than anything else, however, were the marks on his skin. Against his sickly white flesh, the dull red scars struck a very unpleasant contrast. He now had fifty-six tally marks in total, all across his torso. He had not cut into his legs or forearms for fear of the blood loss, but he preferred his marks as they were anyway. They made it obvious, inescapably so, that he was a different man. And Victor Zsasz liked being easily identifiable as different.

'Zsasz!' From nearby, he heard the familiar roar. He noticed the Waylon Jones never seemed to speak, but shouted at his quietest. He left the room and descended back into the rotting passage that connected it to the tunnels. At the first turn, he found himself face-to-chest with the massive figure of Waylon Jones, who stood a full foot taller than him and was about twice as wide.

'Hello Croc,' Zsasz said, his tone formal and yet devoid of politeness. Waylon Jones glared down at him – he never starred, only glared – without answering.

He heard a quiet but high pitched whimpering that could not have come from his companion. In the dark, it took him a moment to realise it was coming from the woman Croc had in a headlock with his right arm. Then he noticed he had a smaller, thinner woman similarly held in place in his left arm, apparently unconscious.

'One for you,' growled Croc, throwing the whimpering woman at Zsasz's feet. 'One for me.' He hauled the unconscious woman onto his back and carried her off back through the darkness. Zsasz was privately grateful. He preferred it when his subjects were conscious. He liked to watch their eyes when he did his work on them.

'Come in,' he told her, grabbing her none too gently and pulling her along as he ascended to his lodgings. He made out some vaguely muttered pleas from the woman but payed no mind to them. As the passage neared his room it grew lighter, and Zsasz realised the woman was quite young, perhaps only a few years out of girlhood. She was passably good looking too. This pleased Victor Zsasz: it was just what he had been looking for.

They reached the opening to the room itself, at which point Zsasz paused to take another look at his companion. She looked back, her eyes wide with horror. And what a pair of eyes they were. He would have to focus on them as they went dull. But first, he decided, he wanted appreciation. He had been working hard, after all. A true modern day starving artist.

'Please look around,' he said flatly, then pushed her into the room so harshly she fell to the floor. She obliged him, looking around. She screamed. Zsasz smiled. He liked being appreciated. He was still smiling when he cut the fifty-seventh mark into his weedy left tricep.

Batman and Robin stood at the edge of the Gotham Docks. The murky sea water reflected too many city lights for the time of night. Gotham always felt most alive during the mobs prime hours and half dead the rest of the time. They weren't too far from large cluster of shipping containers, from all having come from God knows where, waiting to be sent to God knows who.

Batman had once rescued an entire shipment of child slaves hidden inside one container, to be delivered to Carmine Falcone, Gotham's most powerful mob boss at the time. He hadn't found any conclusive evidence to link it back to him, but his first priority was making sure the kids were safe. After a few interviews with less than willing suspects, Gotham City's Police Department had managed to pin Falcone for a comparatively minor tax evasion charge, and soon he was facing charges of conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to kidnap, torture, drug dealing, money laundering and more. Within a week he attempted to flee the city he had proudly bragged was his backyard. The next morning he was found in pieces in the very docks of Gotham his downfall had begun in, feasted on by a lot of fish not local to the area. The GCPD had been unable to track this to anyone, but the message was clear to all it was meant for: The Penguin had taken the throne.

That had been nearly six years ago. Batman had been a hero to many at the time, winning over public opinion at a whiplash-inducing rate. Tonight, he ruminated, the best he could do was find a lunatic by following a trail of bodies, and if that failed, what for the trail to grow.

'Here', he indicated to Robin, pointing to a small, thin beach of shingle about one hundred metres away, under the edge they stood against. Both of them headed over and jumped quite a few feet down onto it, the fall slowed slightly by their capes, and set off until the saw a large, spherical opening to the sewer built into the concrete edge of the dock. Black water spilled out of it making a small pool, splitting the bed of shingle in half. An old, rusted, barred gate rested in the pool, apparently ripped from the opening.

'Looks like someone has been here then,' Robin unhelpfully observed.

'Someone very strong,' Batman said, leaning over and examining the gate. 'These bars have been weakened by age and water erosion but would still be reasonably sturdy. No ordinary human being could have ripped these out.'

'A giant alligator, maybe?' Robin remarked.

'Let's not jump to conclusions, Batman said flatly. He retrieved a flare from his belt and lit it up, the flash temporarily causing tem both to squint slightly. 'Follow me.'

Both of them advanced into the darkness.

Deeper in the subterranean lair, Zsasz caught up with Croc. This had not been a difficult feat, as Croc was so large he had to move very slowly through most of the tunnels, crouching and sometimes even crawling like a beast.

'Thanks for that last one,' Zsasz said. 'It was perfect, just what I needed. I'm grateful, honestly.'

'Better be,' growled Croc. 'Young women taste best.'

'They make such wonderful models though,' Zsasz said. 'Art will outlive us all.' Croc's only response was to spit onto the stone wall.

'Another trip out tonight is good,' Zsasz continued. 'I'll be ready soon, I think, it'll be a masterpiece. I'll give a cut to you too of course. Of the money, I mean, you know I can't actually offer a cut up piece of…'

'Quiet,' Croc snapped.

Zsasz actually looked downhearted, offended even. 'I only…'

'Quiet. I hear someone.'

Zsasz pricked up his ears. He could hear voices when he listened carefully. The stone walls and unusual construction of Gotham's literal underworld meant echoes travelled far and unpredictably.

'Someone's,' Croc corrected himself.

'Who is it?' Zsasz muttered, sounding vaguely annoyed.

Croc gave a rare grin, revealing a mouthful of fangs. 'Seconds.'


End file.
